


Just a Taste

by fabrega



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Licking, M/M, Post-Canon, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Tongues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 03:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19309438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: "Not you," Crowley says, wrinkling his nose. "I know whatyoutaste like."





	Just a Taste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HazelHare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelHare/gifts).



> For HazelHare, whose plot bunny I adopted. ♥ 
> 
> Thanks also to smarsh for the beta and the encouragement! ♥♥

"Something's changed," Crowley says, suddenly alert.

"It's a new cologne." Aziraphale smiles sheepishly. "My barber suggested--"

Crowley wrinkles his nose at him. "Not you, I know what _you_ taste like."

Crowley is dimly aware that Aziraphale has stopped talking and is looking at him curiously, but is too focused on the change in the air to figure out why. As much as he wishes it wasn't the case, there are more important things going on than Aziraphale's weirdness.

 _Then_ Aziraphale says, "...I'm sorry, did you say 'taste'?"

"Taste, smell, same thing." Crowley waves a hand in what he hopes is an appropriately dismissive manner.

"Are they?"

Crowley glances around the bookshop, to make sure nobody is paying attention to them. 

Aziraphale glances around too, looking a little perplexed, since no one else is in the bookshop.

Then, Crowley pulls his dark glasses down ever-so-slightly, so that Aziraphale can see his irises, and gives a meaningful shrug.

"Ah, yes, of course." Aziraphale looks thoughtful, and his lips purse up in that way that Crowley knows means he has more he wants to say. Better head _that_ off.

"If I might draw your attention back to the matter at hand? The end of the world?" It's probably not possible to be too insistent about Armageddon, but Crowley does feel like he might be pushing it.

* * *

They avert the Apocalypse. 

Crowley wishes he could say that he always knew they would, but it was actually pretty touch-and-go there, a couple of times. Aziraphale had been discorporated. Satan had shown up. Hell had prepared a special holy water bath, just for him. That he and Aziraphale are both still in one piece is a blasted miracle, one he is determined not to take for granted.

They're out to dinner, again, when Aziraphale brings it up again. Crowley had forgotten the conversation entirely--what with all the Apocalypse going on--until Aziraphale says, in that very specific, airy way where someone wants you to believe that they've only just thought of what they were about to say and haven't, in fact, been laboriously thinking about it for quite some time, "So, what do _you_ taste like?"

Crowley spits out his drink. It's spectacular--the mouthful of wine goes all over the table and all over an unfortunate waiter nearby, and he spills some of what's left in his glass on his shirt and into his lap.

Aziraphale is out of his chair immediately, apologizing to the waiter and the nearby patrons, discreetly miracling the wine into water with a surprising alacrity. He even miracles the wine still left in Crowley's glass, so that when Crowley tries to take another swallow to cope with whatever's happening here, all he gets is warm tap water.

He scowls at Aziraphale and takes another big, spiteful drink of water.

Aziraphale sits, fussily settling himself again, and gives Crowley an unbelievably sharp look. "Surely that wasn't necessary."

Crowley boggles at him. "Oh, I very much think it was. Were you _listening_ to yourself?"

"What, so you can know what I taste like, but I can't--"

Crowley cuts him off. "Angel, _really_."

"All I'm saying is that it hardly seems fair." Aziraphale pouts, readjusting his napkin in his lap.

"At least buy me dinner first," Crowley mutters, one of those human phrases that's come in handy over the years as he dealt with the legions of Hell. It's a joke, and he expects that Aziraphale would understand that.

He _doesn't_ expect Aziraphale to raise what would be on any other being a _devilish_ eyebrow and gesture at the table.

* * *

Crowley paces the bookshop after dinner. He's not sure how Aziraphale talked him into coming here. He's _really_ not sure what's going to happen next.

Aziraphale is seated in the chair at his rolltop desk. He's looking up at Crowley, and his face is doing that thing where he's incredibly pleased but trying not to show it, where he's trying to hide the smile in a moue but his eyes are having none of it. Crowley's not sure why he even bothers trying to hide it; you might as well try to hide the entire sun, while you were standing on the surface of it.

They both have another glass of alcohol. Crowley's worried he's going to need it.

"You can take any form, right?" Crowley says. He gestures with the glass, and the alcohol in it sloshes dangerously. "So you could change yourself."

Aziraphale looks taken aback, a little affronted. "I'm perfectly happy with myself the way I am!"

( _And I'm perfectly happy with you just the way you are too,_ Crowley thinks, but quickly pushes that thought down. It's definitely not the time for that.)

"Yes, okay, but if you want to know what I taste like, your options are snake tongue--" Crowley sticks out his tongue, concentrating a little so that Aziraphale can see the way it moves and the slightly forked bit at the end, "--or else, I dunno, you put my fingers in your mouth, which doesn't sound very pleasant for either of us."

Aziraphale, hell help him, looks like he might seriously be considering the fingers thing. Crowley waggles them at him menacingly. "My _unwashed_ fingers, which I'll first stick into a bowl full of loose change."

Aziraphale makes a face. Mission accomplished.

"Well, if you insist," Aziraphale says, as though this whole thing was _Crowley's_ idea. He sits back in the chair, tilting his head back, and sticks his tongue out. His eyes squeeze shut in concentration. As Crowley watches, his tongue changes--just a hint of a fork at the end, for just a moment--and then Aziraphale's eyes snap open.

Crowley can taste the change. It's a little unsettling.

"Thith ith exthwordinawy!" Aziraphale says (around his tongue, which is still sticking out). "It'th like thith fow--"

Crowley gives him a look, and he brings his tongue in and closes his mouth.

"It's like this for you all the time?"

Crowley nods. There hadn't been a lot he liked about being a snake, and he'd changed a lot of it as soon as he could, but being able to smell with his tongue had been one of the few things he hadn't been able to part with. He'd tried, and it felt like a kind of colorblindness.

Aziraphale pauses, looks at Crowley carefully. He's still pacing, still holding the glass, which is somehow still dangerously full. "I'm going to ask you again--please think of the books."

Crowley puts the glass down, raises his hands in a show of remorse and good faith.

"What do you taste like, Crowley?"

 _Come over here and find out_ , Crowley thinks. The alcohol sloshing happily in his gut wants him to say it out loud, but thankfully he is still sober enough not to make _too_ many terrible decisions.

Aziraphale seems to get the gist of it without him saying it, though, getting up out of his chair and making his way across the shop floor to where Crowley is frozen in his tracks. Unthinking, Crowley holds out a hand to him.

"Not covered in loose change?" Aziraphale asks, with a look that's somehow more coy than distrustful.

Crowley shakes his head. "All clean."

Aziraphale takes his hand and lifts it towards his face, inhaling deeply. Crowley fights down a shiver. He can feel Aziraphale's breath on his skin, and the touch of his hand hasn't gotten any less--well, any _less_ since the last time, when they'd swapped forms back.

"So, Angel,” Crowley says, hiding the churn of his gut behind a mask of bravado, "What _do_ I taste like?"

"You taste good," Aziraphale says, without hesitation.

Crowley blinks at him, some part of him mortally offended. "Good? Me, good?!"

"Oh, no, not 'good' like--" Here, Aziraphale makes a series of gestures and faces that Crowley eventually figures out is meant to mean _heaven_ , "--but, you know, 'good'. As in, I like it."

Before Crowley can wrap his brain around that one, Aziraphale, who's still standing very close, still holding onto Crowley, sticks his new snakey tongue out and licks a stripe across the back of Crowley's hand.

Crowley panics and snatches his hand away. Did Aziraphale really just...? Then, he begins to laugh, almost hysterically.

Aziraphale looks hurt. His face darkens. He pouts. "What exactly is so funny?"

Crowley has to catch his breath before he can answer. "You licked me!"

"I wanted to verify my new sense of taste!"

"Yeah, fine, okay, but _you_ licked _me_. If you'd made me put money on which of us would lick the other one first, I would've lost that bet."

Aziraphale's eyes widen, and he thrusts his own hand out to Crowley.

Crowley blinks at him. "That's not what I--" he starts to say, but he can't even finish the sentence. It kind of _is_ what he meant.

He takes Aziraphale's hand, trying to ignore the thrill it sends down his spine.

"You never did say what I taste like," Aziraphale says quietly, catching Crowley's gaze and not looking away. "Just that you know."

"You taste like an angel," Crowley says, pulling Aziraphale's hand close to his mouth. "You taste _divine_."

Aziraphale smiles and does that sort of nervous, excited, wiggly shiver that he does. "Is that a good thing? You _are_ a demon, after all."

Crowley--alcohol-bold, apocalypse-bold--presses a kiss to the back of Aziraphale's hand. His lips part slightly so he can inhale the taste of Aziraphale's skin. Aziraphale doesn't pull away, even though Crowley can still feel him trembling, and his smile goes from bright to blinding.

Then he licks Aziraphale's hand, because he has to, right? Aziraphale wrinkles his nose at this, but doesn't pull away. Crowley gives him a curious look.

Aziraphale shrugs, transparently attempting to be sly. "I _did_ buy you dinner," he says, which makes Crowley laugh.

Crowley kisses his hand again. This one isn't for taste, although if and when Aziraphale asks, he's going to swear that it is. He just... He's spent so long adjusting his expectations, becoming okay with what they have instead of what he wants. This is the closest they've been, the closest they've gotten to the thing that Crowley has offered Aziraphale over and over through the years, the thing that Aziraphale has always seemed skeptical of, disdainful of, afraid of. He takes several millennia-worth of longing and compresses it down into a single, tender kiss. If this is all he gets--and he's not an idiot, he's aware that this is almost certainly all he gets--he's not going to hold anything back.

When he looks back up, Aziraphale is staring at him, wonder in his eyes. "Divine," he says faintly. Crowley can't tell if Aziraphale is echoing what he'd said earlier or if--

With the hand Crowley isn't holding, Aziraphale grabs his face and kisses him. They both seem surprised by this, but for once in his existence, Crowley isn't going to question something that seems too good to be true. There will be time for them to regret it after it's done; for now, he's going to enjoy it.

Aziraphale really does taste good, in all the senses of the word.

When Aziraphale finally pulls away, he's beaming as Crowley has never seen him beam before. That answers the 'regrets' question, at least, Crowley thinks with no small amount of relief.

"Do you know how long I've wanted to do that?" Aziraphale asks, soft as a heartbreak. 

Crowley's not sure if it's a rhetorical question or not, and so he hazards a guess: "Millennia?" 

At the same time, Aziraphale says, "Nearly a century!"

Crowley stops, steps back, blinks at him. "Is that all?"

"What do you mean, _is that all_? It might as well have been--wait, did you say 'millennia'?"

Crowley shrinks back a little further. He backs into a bookshelf. Aziraphale takes a step forward, although Crowley's not sure if it's for him or the books he's just caused to wobble precariously.

"Crowley, why did you say 'millennia'?"

"Why did _you_ say 'nearly a century'?"

"Oh," Aziraphale says, as it dawns on him. "Oh _my_." He steps in even closer, raises a hand to touch Crowley's face. 

Crowley can't help but lean in to the touch. He closes his eyes for just a moment, tries to stay present and not get wrapped up in the complicated mess of feelings he's feeling right now.

"You should've said something," Aziraphale murmurs.

"I really thought I had." Crowley shakes his head. Idiots, the both of them. "How much more obvious did you need me to be? Neon lights? A brass band? Sky-writing?"

Aziraphale smiles a small, wry smile. "You know, someone asked me recently how somebody as clever as me could be so stupid."

"It's a very good question." Crowley smiles now too. He rocks forward and kisses Aziraphale again, really _tasting_ him this time, the way he's always wanted to. It's so much better than he ever could have imagined.

He wants more, though, and Aziraphale seems willing, so he goes for it, kisses along Aziraphale's jawline, smelling and tasting his skin. He noses up under Aziraphale's ear, inhaling through his mouth, before letting his tongue dart out to have a taste too.

Aziraphale inhales sharply, going still. Crowley can't tell if that's a good or bad thing, and so he pauses, pulling away. He might be a demon, but he's not _impolite_.

He holds his breath.

"Don't stop!"

Crowley relaxes, starts to go back to what he was doing, and then Aziraphale interrupts.

"Actually, do you mind if I--" he starts to ask, and Crowley agrees before he can even finish the question. Aziraphale can do whatever he wants with Crowley. He always could.

Aziraphale puts his lips to Crowley's neck, at the hollow between the column of his neck and his shoulder. Crowley closes his eyes as Aziraphale worries at his skin, lets himself sink into the feeling. It's also so, so much better than he ever could have imagined.

He wonders what _else_ might be better than he'd imagined.

* * *

"I like it," Aziraphale says, afterwards. "The snake tongue, I mean. It's like..."

"Another color you didn't know you weren't seeing," Crowley says, when Aziraphale fails to come up with an appropriate simile.

Aziraphale nods. "The whole world feels different," he says, although the way he says it makes Crowley think that they may not be talking about the taste thing anymore.

They both smile. It does feel different, and it's good.


End file.
